


the old concept of impossibility

by Fluffifullness



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Español | Spanish, Fluff, Foreign Language, Languages and Linguistics, Light Angst, M/M, POV Carlos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 01:33:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1669817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffifullness/pseuds/Fluffifullness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos shrugs and takes a bite of his pasta, chewing thoughtfully. “I wasn’t always good at those things. If we’d met all those years ago, I might not have been able to understand anything you’re saying now.”</p><p>“That hardly matters. Comprehension is no barrier to communication, dear Carlos.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the old concept of impossibility

**Author's Note:**

> This is not only my first work in _Night Vale_ fandom, but also the first fic I've written even partially in Spanish. I'm 100% still learning the language, so by all means - if you see any problems with those lines, let me know in the comments. :)
> 
> And if you don't speak any Spanish, don't worry; you can run a sentence or two through Google translate if you want to, but you'd be fine even without that.

As he hunches just a little father over his desk (chaotically disorganized, as usual), Carlos listens to a steady stream of long, dark clouds rolling into town. Of course, he can’t _see_ the long dark clouds, so logically speaking, he shouldn’t know they’re there, let alone what, exactly, they look like – but this is Night Vale, and while maybe he hasn’t stopped _questioning_ the sounds produced by different types of cloud formations, he’s at least learned to stop being surprised by the ease with which he can identify them based solely on the auditory stimulus. He’s even started to sketch out a rough classification guide on a spare sheet of paper – though, beyond that, he’s not sure exactly how he can hope to go about performing any experiments. Clouds fall a little too far under the category of _nature,_ anyway, and Carlos is a _scientist._ Clouds are not his area of expertise.

“How unusual,” he hears. “They haven’t been this loud for quite some time.”

“It might rain,” he agrees without turning around. Muttering, he adds, “In the middle of a dessert, and summer, for the third time this month.”

Cecil chuckles.

Carlos sighs and leans way back in his chair. He stays that way for a moment, hesitating, and then he lets the chair swivel – independent of any human aid, of course – so that he’s facing Cecil directly.

He smiles in spite of himself. Cecil’s long hair has been pulled back into a loose ponytail; the tie has already drifted to around the halfway point between the top of his head and the ends of his hair, and a few strands have fallen out of the little band entirely. Carlos thinks they frame Cecil’s face rather nicely.

Cecil notices the direction of Carlos’s gaze and reaches up to tug nervously at his hair. “Does it look bad? Oh, I _knew_ I should have dressed up a bit more before coming, but the station’s front door refused to open again today.” He breaks off to add something about poorly-maintained bloodstones and ‘the problem with putting off those weekly exorcisms,’ but he says it in such an exaggerated undertone that Carlos can’t make everything out.

His face heats up, anyway. “It’s fine,” he says. “You, um – you look – well, I’m sorry about, ah, this,” and he gestures awkwardly at his own clothes – rumpled, and a small coffee stain on one side of his white lab coat. He chastises himself mentally for not at least changing into a clean one. Cecil, on the other hand, looks decidedly strange in what appear to be snakeskin pants and a loose-fitting, brilliantly yellow linen shirt (kind of pirate-like, Carlos notes), but he looks strange in the same way that everything in Night Vale is generally strange.

Which is to say, he looks good. Really good, even incredible – in scientific terms – and Carlos still doesn’t know how he does it.

“‘Sorry?’” Cecil repeats. “But, Carlos, you look _incredible_ , only a little tired – have you been sleeping enough? Listen, I know how important your science is, but you can’t forget to get at least eight hours –”

“I know, I know,” Carlos says quickly, giving Cecil an affectionate smile. “It’s been a long day, that’s all, _cariño_.”

Cecil takes a single step back and gives Carlos another once-over before nodding – accepting without comment Carlos’s assertion, which is so very like Cecil, after all, that easy way he manages to believe in (or, alternatively, to suddenly no longer believe in) anything. To Carlos, still an outsider in as many ways as he is already just another citizen, that easy impressionability seems to be a natural defense mechanism for most people in Night Vale. Cecil, though – the way he does it is a little different, a little more thoughtful, more… selective. He sees things he’s not supposed to, acknowledges things that could get him killed… he isn’t like other residents of Night Vale, never was.

Carlos stands, a little weak in the knees – because he’s been sitting for so long, that’s all, he’s sure of it – and Cecil offers him a hand and a wide grin. “Can we leave your car here? I’m sure – well, not sure, exactly, but I _doubt_ that you meant your day was literally longer than it was supposed to be. Though time _is_ really just a flawed product of our imaginations, at best. Maybe it was? Well, even if it only felt that way, I certainly don’t mind driving, myself. You can rest.”

“ _Muchas gracias_ ,” Carlos sighs fondly.

Cecil frowns perplexedly at him.

“Oh – um,” Carlos looks at the ground as they move toward the door. “Thank you… very much.”

 

“Oh, Carlos,” Cecil says, punctuating his interjection with the soft slam of the car door – that, and the subtle reptilian hissing emanating now from his snakeskin pants. Carlos eyes them suspiciously from the passenger side seat, but he can’t seem to detect any movement – at least not without looking too long and being excessively obvious about it, anyway. His own freshly-changed lab coat is crisp and cool against his skin; he answers Cecil with a mute look, one part curious and one part alarmed.

“I have something to say.”

“O-okay?”

“It’s a little embarrassing,” Cecil confesses after a long pause. He still hasn’t turned the key in the ignition, though his hand is poised to do so at any moment.

Carlos grins. “You know I don’t mind. I like the way you, er, say things.”

Cecil brightens. “Really? Ah, no, I mean, I was only thinking… well. What if you spoke Spanish… more? A-around me, for example?”

Carlos raises an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t understand a word of it. I’ve _heard_ you say ‘muchas gracias’ on your show – remember?”

Cecil clears his throat. “I may have had to request some help from one of our interns when I wrote the script for that particular night, but that’s hardly fair, anyway, Carlos; I only said it once, and that was _weeks_ ago. Of course I don’t remember!”

“Spanish isn’t so hard,” Carlos says with a laugh. “At least not compared to the Russian I’ve heard you quote on the air. Uh, but, Spanish – I could teach you, if you want. Starting today?”

“Oh! That sounds _neat,_ ” murmurs Cecil – so emphatically that his voice isn’t even slightly drowned out by the dull roar of his car’s tired engine whirring to life. “Are you sure you aren’t too tired?” When Carlos shakes his head, Cecil asks more quietly, “Can you speak some Spanish right now?”

“Lo que tú quieras, _cariño_ ,” Carlos chuckles.

There’s something liberating in the simple words, in using them here with Cecil, at his request. Before coming to Night Vale, Carlos had plenty of time to grow accustomed to the occasional snide comment from some intractable English-speaker who claimed to be offended by the use of his first language in public. Because this was America, land of opportunity and thinly-veiled racism, where for some people anything that wasn’t smooth English was wrong, plain and simple. Where sometimes, his science couldn’t outweigh the darkness of his skin. After a small handful of unpleasant exchanges, Carlos had fallen into the habit of only speaking Spanish around his family – or by himself. Give or take the occasional utterance, short and usually under his breath.

Cecil’s smile is positively radiant. “What did that mean?”

Carlos’s chest swells with affection, but he only shrugs. “Si quieres saber, vas a tener que prestarme mucha atención durante nuestras lecciones. No debo explicarte lo que quiere decir todo antes de que tengas la oportunidad de aprender por ti mismo.”

“You sound like a totally different person when you do that,” Cecil gushes. “I mean, well, I’d certainly like to understand, but – _dear_ , perfect Carlos, the mere sound of your voice leaves nothing at all to be desired.”

Carlos raises a hand to cover his face. “C-Cecil, please.”

“What? Are you mad?”

“I’m not mad…”

“Done already?” Cecil wonders, a little sheepishly.

“It’s been a… a while since I spoke Spanish around anyone outside of family,” Carlos mumbles, busying himself with the obviously unimportant task of eyeing the storm clouds that are still gathering noisily overhead. He reflects momentarily on the connection that might possibly exist between cacophonous clouds and strepitant sunrises, but all he can probably hope to generate on that subject is vague conjecture, anyway. “It’ll just take some getting used to, that’s all.”

The car slows to a stop behind Cecil’s apartment building, and Cecil cuts the engine before shifting in his seat to face Carlos more fully, his dark eyes wide and curious. “I’ll do anything you need to make it easier,” he says earnestly. “If you like, I might be able to remember enough modified Sumerian to trade one lesson for another.”

“Uh,” Carlos stammers, “that’s – actually, it’s fine, Cecil, but thank you. You don’t really need to do anything different. I’m already lucky to have you, and – well, it’s a bit strange, but I’m glad you enjoy the, uh, the sound of my voice.”

“In any language!” Cecil affirms cheerily.

“ _Eres absurdo_ ,” Carlos murmurs, the barest hint of another smile teasing the corners of his lips.

With that (and a quick kiss, maybe, not that anyone, least of all the sheriff’s secret police, saw anything), they finally swing the doors of the car wide open, step out, and – skirting one or two hooded figures in the process – make their way up to Cecil’s small, third-floor-with-the-atmospheric-pressure-of-a-thirtieth-floor apartment.

 

Carlos joins Cecil in the kitchen, perches himself on a stool and watches his boyfriend wielding pots and pans and a sort of peculiar spoon with a carved wooden handle. The carving depicts a red-eyed snake winding its way down toward the wheat-free noodles on the stove; the snake itself bears an almost-suspicious resemblance to the ones that appeared all over Night Vale during the recent wheat and wheat by-products incident – or perhaps to the more recent infestation of Big Rico’s Pizza – but, then again, Carlos is a scientist, not a – a _snake-ologist_ , so he can’t be certain.

Cecil sees him looking and brandishes the spoon over his head – precariously dodging the low-hanging ceiling fan in the process.

“Isn’t it adorable? I found it just _sitting_ by the door when I came home the other day.”

“And you’re sure it’s safe…?”

“Hm. I don’t know why it wouldn’t be,” Cecil decides.

Carlos shakes his head slowly. “Okay, uh. Can I help with anything?”

“Oh, no,” Cecil insists. “You’re a guest here, and this is a date even if it is a little informal. Of course I can’t put you to work like that. Though – if you’d like…”

“Yes?” Carlos asks, already sure that he knows what Cecil wants.

Cecil smiles shyly; Carlos catches it in profile as Cecil reaches to one side for another handful of carrots. “You haven’t told me anything about your science today.”

Carlos leans forward, holding his chin in the cupped palms of his hands, his elbows balanced on his knees and his feet on the top rung of the short bar stool. “I’ve been thinking,” he begins, “about the murals that have been appearing all over town. There was one outside of our laboratory yesterday morning, though I, uh, might’ve forgotten to mention it before.”

Cecil sighs. “That would have made a wonderful addition to our show tonight,” he mourns. Carlos suspects that half of the disappointment derives from Cecil’s missed opportunity to speak at length about Carlos while on air. He actually can’t quite tell whether he shares that disappointment, but it isn’t as if it makes all that much of a difference, anyway; Cecil generally doesn’t need news-related excuses to bring their relationship up at random points during his show.

“Sorry,” he murmurs. “Well, it wasn’t much, anyway. Just a – a rocking chair. Actually, it was a lot like the one my _abuelita_ used to use, at the old house.” He smiles. “She loved that chair. We even brought it with us when we left. _Ay,_ _qué suerte tuvimos_ ,” and he takes a deep breath, feels himself relax into the warmth of Cecil’s kitchen, “pero ella no pude usarla por mucho tiempo, después de todo.Quizá no pudiera soportar marcharse de su antiguo hogar…”

“Carlos?”

“Oh,” he breathes, opening his eyes wide and looking back at Cecil in something like alarm. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I –”

Cecil shakes his head. “It’s okay. You just surprised me.” He turns back to the food and adds, “You can keep going the way you were, if you’d rather.”

“No, that – that would be rude,” Carlos stammers. “Really, I don’t usually just slip into it like that. I must be – uh, tired.” Or the aforementioned murals’ neurological effects are just _slightly_ more serious than Carlos determined previously. It could go either way, and it’s generally very hard to know until it’s too late.

Cecil turns again to frown at him. “There doesn’t need to be anything wrong with you, does there?”

The question catches Carlos off guard. Cecil tends not to be so straightforward about asking things that personal, or at least things that are both personal and maybe indicative of the little flaws that Carlos can’t help having. He starts to answer the question, but he can’t seem to move past the initial ‘um,’ and to his utter bewilderment, even that comes out layered seemingly thick with his Spanish accent, more ‘ _este_ ’ than ‘um.’

He jumps at the sudden click of Cecil turning the stove off, at the tiny clatter of various cooking instruments being shifted around and then at the redundant clicking of – he hadn’t realized that Cecil was also wearing a pair of shoes with pointed heels.

“Hey,” Cecil soothes, his hand now on Carlos’s cheek. “Are you alright?”

“I – yes,” Carlos manages.

“Should I not have asked?” Cecil looks concerned, just concerned – and apologetic. “It wasn’t my intention to remind you of anything unpleasant…”

“You didn’t,” Carlos assures him. “I just haven’t thought about a lot of this in a long time, and it’s – well, it’s disconcerting, though not _painful_.”

“I don’t know how to help,” Cecil says plainly.

Carlos laughs. “You might be helping too much already, _cariño._ ”

“I see. Can I fix that?”

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

Cecil studies him for a moment before seeming to arrive at a conclusion independent of Carlos’s input.

“What were you talking about?”

“I was just… reminiscing,” Carlos says. “About things that happened years ago. It’s not important.”

“It’s important to you,” Cecil suggests, “and me.”

“…I thought you wanted to hear me talk about the experiments I – I mean, science – science things,” Carlos finishes, no longer looking directly at Cecil.

“I’d like that,” Cecil agrees.

Carlos pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to hide his smile. “Don’t you have any preference?”

“Well,” Cecil muses, “you _did_ promise to teach me some Spanish tonight. I don’t know, it may not be the distraction you need, but you can talk about anything – or teach me anything – and I’ll listen, I promise.”

“The food…”

“It’s done already,” Cecil says. “We can eat in the living room. Perfect for a rainy night, don’t you think?”

Carlos nods gratefully and lets Cecil help him to his feet. He stands by the kitchen window and watches the hooded figures glide up and down the parking lot while Cecil splits the entire contents of the pan between two mismatched plates, humming as he does so – a tuneless song, unrecognizable even as today’s weather, but as musical as anything else Cecil’s ever said or sighed.

“You aren’t the first person who’s ever taken an interest in my first language,” Carlos says quietly.

“I’m not surprised to hear that. Here,” and Carlos accepts the plate that Cecil hands to him – inlaid, Carlos notices, with the undulating figure of yet another snake. He doesn’t think to comment on that, instead following Cecil into the living room and sitting – carefully balancing his plate – on the couch.

“You _are_ different, though,” he informs Cecil after a fleeting moment of stillness.

“Am I different in a good way?”

Carlos nods. “Estoy agradecido de haber conocido a una persona como tú.”

Cecil’s brow furrows. “A person?”

“There, it’s not so hard, after all, right?” Cecil beams like he’s just been told that his Spanish is second-to-none; his contentment swells into a delighted laugh and the dull thump of both his shoes meeting the floor before he dips onto the couch beside Carlos – _close_ beside him, his tattoos shifting and swirling, seeming almost to vibrate with excitement. He rests his head on Carlos’s shoulder and sighs happily.

“What about the other words?”

Carlos hums thoughtfully. “In Spanish, we change the endings of verbs to alter the tense and match the subject. You do the same thing in English, see? I am, you are, he is…” He watches Cecil’s face light up more as he counts off every present-tense form of ‘to be’ on his fingers. “And Spanish verbs follow clearer rules than English ones. That’s why I had such a hard time learning,” he concludes with a tentative smile. “It took me a long time.”

“You speak perfectly,” Cecil murmurs. “Because you’re so smart.”

“I didn’t feel smart at the time,” Carlos admits. “Even in a school full of lots of kids trying to learn English, there was plenty of teasing, and – well, I’m a scientist, not a linguist. Language isn’t my strong suit, like it is yours. I had to work hard on it through middle school, high school, college… I still make mistakes.”

Cecil shimmies closer to Carlos, reducing whatever distance had been left between them to nothing at all.

“I make mistakes,” he says, “and I only speak one language. You’re good at explaining, and you pronounce everything so well. It makes me sick to think of anyone criticizing you for that.”

Carlos shrugs and takes a bite of his pasta, chewing thoughtfully. “I wasn’t always good at those things. If we’d met all those years ago, I might not have been able to understand anything you’re saying now.”

“That hardly matters. Comprehension is no barrier to communication, dear Carlos.”

“There are lots of people who’d probably beg to differ,” Carlos sighs.

He doesn’t look directly at Cecil – just listens to him pause to eat, his fork scraping the plate and his breathing just a little bit uneven. He dwells abstractedly on that simple sound until Cecil finally speaks again. “What about verbs? Which parts of what you said before were verbs?”

“Ah,” Carlos remembers with a jolt – not quite as bothered as he should be by the non sequitur. “Well, there were lots, I guess. ‘ _Estoy_ ,’” he says, slipping again into the familiar accent, “is like – well, there are two ways to say ‘I am’ in Spanish, but that’s one.”

“What’s the difference?” Cecil asks, rapt with interest. Carlos is almost inclined to wonder if Cecil prefers this kind of lesson to Carlos’s protracted speeches about science and all of its minute technicalities, but then – Cecil said it himself, didn’t he, that ‘ _Comprehension is no barrier to communication._ ’Carlos himself may not be able to move past his science-oriented impulse to understand everything – or the curtailed everything that is appropriate in this miraculously-functioning unreality – but he can at least claim to have a feel for the concept, anyway. The pure absorption that etches itself into Cecil’s every feature when Carlos goes on and on – just rambling, really, in the least eloquent way possible – about everything he does and thinks at the lab… He’s always known that Cecil understands very little of it, but he’s never once _felt_ that way. He’s only ever felt listened-to.

“The difference,” he repeats, distracted again, now. “Um. One verb is for things like emotions, physical conditions, location – temporary stuff, more or less. That’s _estar_ – er, the one I used as _estoy._ ”

“Were you describing your own feelings, Carlos?”

“I – yeah. I was.” Carlos finds his face growing warm again, so he sighs heavily and catches Cecil’s hand in his own. Looking away and finally regretting that they haven’t so much as touched the (already flickering) TV yet, he elaborates, “About you.”

“Temporary,” Cecil repeats, his voice shrinking.

“Oh,” Carlos mumbles, “no, that’s not how it is. I promise” – kissing Cecil’s forehead, sighing so that his breath gusts warmly, he hopes, through that adorably unkempt hair – “that isn’t what I meant by temporary.”

Cecil nods, but looks unconvinced. “Then why not use the other one?”

“It’s not for emotions at all,” Carlos reassures him. “It’s more… things you’d use to identify something, like physical characteristics or – or where you’re from. Time. Concrete things.”

“Time,” Cecil scoffs. “There isn’t anything less concrete than that, is there?”

Carlos has to laugh at that. Maybe there isn’t anything less concrete than origin, hometowns, and memories, either.

“Don’t you identify yourself as my boyfriend?” Cecil continues, his voice rising in pitch to resemble the tone of a displeased child. “It fits better, I think – that other word.”

“Okay,” Carlos says, still grinning. “ _Soy tu novio, y no abandonaría eso por nada._ Is that better?”

“…What was it?”

“ _Soy_ is the first-person, singular, present-tense form of _ser_ – that second word. _Tu_ is ‘your,’ and _novio_ is – well,” Carlos smiles, “it’s ‘boyfriend.’”

“Oh! And the second part?”

“Uh,” Carlos stammers, “that’s – it’s harder to say it in English.” (Because Cecil understands English in the literal, actually-comprehending sense, too.)

Cecil stares (figurative) holes into him. “Please try?”

“I – ugh,” Carlos mutters, covering his face with his hand, fingers splayed. “I-wouldn’t-give-that-up-for-anything,” he says, almost too quickly for the words to make individual sense. He stubbornly avoids meeting Cecil’s eyes with his own. “I-is that alright?” He takes another bite of his pasta (way more delicious than it has any right to be, as quickly as Cecil managed to put it all together) to distract himself; it doesn’t work.

“Oooh, Carlos,” Cecil breathes after a moment of perfect silence. “That’s _very_ alright, much more than alright, actually. It may be redundant, but I should add that I wouldn’t give it up, either, and I really do like the way you say it – in any language, but the second verb really is – well, it’s _neat_ –”

“ _Cecil_ ,” Carlos manages. “The verbs themselves really don’t have any special meaning by themselves. It’s just the – the grammar, the way it works, and the rules mainly just are what they are. So – it’s more _what_ I say than how I say it. If that makes any sense?” He looks at Cecil hopefully.

“Well – rules _are_ important, of course,” Cecil agrees. “In that case, then… what about the one you used to describe your emotions? Was that just as important?”

Carlos struggles for a moment to _remember._ It had been very little more than a passing comment, if that, but it had mattered, too – mattered a lot. He clears his throat. “I only have one condition, since this was supposed to be sort of a lesson. The verb is _estar._ You have to at least try to pronounce it if you want me to tell you what I said.”

Cecil gives him a scandalized look. “I can’t do it like you.”

“I grew up speaking Spanish,” Carlos points out.

“F-fine,” Cecil huffs. He makes a weak attempt, comically elongates the vowels and pronounces the ‘r’ with one of the most intensely American accents Carlos has ever heard. He laughs, which of course prompts Cecil to shove his half-finished plate of food back onto the table in front of him and then to bury his face in his arms and knees. “I _said_ I couldn’t do it!” he cries with muffled despair.

“Cecil,” Carlos says, his hands already on the other man’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed. You just don’t have the experience, and I haven’t even bothered to explain pronunciation properly yet. We’ll call it my fault, okay? So –”

Cecil reveals just one eye to Carlos – just enough to make his frown obvious. “It isn’t _your_ fault.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Carlos says.

“Will you tell me now?”

“Oh. Yeah, it was – well, more or less word-for-word, I think I said that I’m, er, grateful to have met a person like you.”

“ _Oh…_ ”

“Sorry, it’s – it’s kind of anticlimactic.”

“Oh, not at all,” Cecil promises fervently. “I couldn’t ask for any more than that, dear, perfect, wonderful Carlos. I am – yes, I could almost burst with happiness!”

Carlos shifts against the couch cushions and Cecil’s soft warmth, smiling as a giddy spark of combined relief and sort-of concern courses through him. He genuinely hopes that he isn’t supposed to take the comment about bursting seriously, but he isn’t about to ask at the expense of his pride; either way, Cecil would almost certainly get a kick out of the question.

“Cecil?” he begins again.

“At your service,” Cecil purrs. Coming from anyone else, that line would be tacky at best; coming from Cecil, it is anything but.

“Would it be alright if I just… talked for a while? Without any movies, just this once? In both languages,” he adds. “I – I don’t know, I just – I feel like talking. More than I already have, if you don’t mind.”

“You have your answer already, don’t you, dear Carlos? I could listen all night if I were not already concerned about the state of your municipally-mandated sleep quota.”

Typical Cecil. Carlos smiles, lets his fork fall back onto the plate when he notices that, somehow, he’s eaten everything on it (he catches an odd flutter of movement to his right and, with a sigh that is only distantly irritated, recognizes some of that, at least, as the work of the Faceless Old Woman), and then he begins to talk, at first slow, gentle Spanish and then the quick tempo of eager news and familiarity – and then back to English, and back to slow Spanish again.

He talks about old memories and science and the people who used to mock him for what he couldn’t help being, the years-removed pride that he’d sort of forgotten he’d lost, and the steady ache of incredulity that comes with the weight of Cecil’s hand in his. He talks about how he can’t believe himself – or even you, Cecil, _honestly_ – all but obsessing over simple, silly things like getting dressed up just to veg out on a sofa. He talks about tenses: _el_ _imperfecto_ , the ongoing actions of the past, and _el_ _pretérito_ , the completed, one-time-only occurrences. _El futuro_ , what is to come as well as what _might_ be now. _El presente._ The subjunctive, he explains in English, _el subjuntivo_ , for hopes and doubts and things that could be but aren’t, necessarily. The conditional – for what you _would_ do, given the chance. _Los tiempos perfectos_ , for what has been, had been, _will_ have been done – and more, he whispers. And so much more. _Vamos a necesitar tanto tiempo, tantas horas, si quieres aprender a hablar de verdad – y a escribir y por supuesto, cómo pudiera olvidarme yo, a escuchar, y gracias por eso, siempre…_

He talks about Cecil, _to_ Cecil, tells him in all his adoration how deeply significant he is, how integral a part of Carlos’s existence. How he wouldn’t be sane now, maybe, how he would have lost his grip on this home he’s – or, rather, _they’ve_ built with the four of their hands combined. How he might have given up, moved on, thrown another opportunity entirely away. Clung to the old black-and-white of empirically understandable and simply impossible. Clung to the old concept of impossibility.

He talks about love, and home, and feelings that are temporary in the same way that his entire life is temporary, really just a moment, there-and-gone, but sort of like a star. A flash. He’ll leave that behind, _they_ will, together.

(That much, at least, he says entirely in Spanish, and his cheeks and the back of his neck burn with the force of his words.)

And he’s… surprised. Surprised because he never stops thinking about science, but science alone isn’t nearly enough to measure the breadth of what he’s talked about here, now, tonight. Surprised that he’s reluctant to _stop_ talking, that Cecil has to be the one to interrupt him. Surprised that the snake on the plate in front of him is moving more than obviously, now, winding its way from one edge of the ceramic dish to the other.

“Carlos,” he hears Cecil murmur, distantly. “Carlos.”

“Cecil…”

“You’re falling asleep,” Cecil laughs. “Shall I give you a ride home, or would you do me the honor of spending the night?”

“Mm. No tengo ganas de moverme… ¿Puedo quedarme aquí…?”

“Hm?”

Carlos grins sleepily and tries to remember how to repeat himself. “Can I stay?”

“Carlos, Carlos,” Cecil chides him gently. “You always ask questions you already know the answers to.”

“Do I…?”

Cecil just laughs, almost under his breath, as he gathers up several blankets – most of them emblazoned with the logos of local businesses, the community radio station included – and then helps Carlos upright. Carlos assumes – in and out of full awareness, still smiling faintly – that Cecil intends to help him to his feet, to guide him in to bed and then to lie down with him there.

He _does_ lie down with him, but he does so right here, fully dressed and obviously amused by Carlos’s disoriented surprise when his head meets one of the couch’s cushions – when those logo-laden blankets are tucked around him and Cecil, when Cecil’s lips find his in the close proximity, the sudden darkness. (Was it Cecil who put the light out?)

“All those dishes,” Carlos mumbles, voice noticeably sleep-garbled. “Should get those.”

“They’ll be fine. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Faceless Old Woman went ahead and did them for us – in return for the pasta, you know. She seems to have liked it well enough.”

Carlos accepts this assertion with a mellow nod. “Should’ve… let you talk a bit. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“I get plenty of opportunities,” Cecil says warmly. “Now, sleep. Everything is fine.”

“Hmm,” Carlos agrees, eyes closing again. “Cecil…”

A synthetically impatient sigh. “Yes?”

There is the sound of rain, blood-thick and dark, hitting the window above them. Carlos smiles.

“ _Muchas gracias._ ”


End file.
